WELCOME!

12/2010

Welcome to Prairie Storms Blog. All one post of it. When I started this blog almost a year ago, I envisioned myself blogging weekly about various local artists and musicians. Unfortunately, that idea never quite made it past the drawing board for several reasons, not the least of which is my general laziness, and I never posted another entry after this first one. I haven't totally given up on the idea, but don't hold your breath. If nothing else, my one entry serves as sort of an introduction to me, my style of art and the creative process behind my pieces of work. If you'd like to view more of my artwork, please visit my web gallery at www.marystorms. com.

1/2010

This blog, like the collages I create, is a work in progress. Ideally, I envision each edition or chapter (what is the appropriate term for a blog unit anyway?) being a sort of “Day in the Life Of” tale about one of the many artists – both visual and musical - I have the pleasure of knowing. But before I introduce you to these very talented, hardworking and humble folks, I’m going to first regale you with some biographical oddities, questionable practices and general pomposity concerning one particular artist who's very near and dear to me: ME! . Why, you ask? Because 1) it’s my blog and I can do what I want! and 2) I can’t sue myself for libel.

WHAT EXACTLY DO I DO?

Unfortunately, the day in the life of the artist Mary Storms, is not exactly scintillating stuff. I do, after all, spend a great deal of time quite literally watching paint dry. (By the way, I wanted to use Watching Paint Dry as my blog name. I thought it was such a clever idea. Apparently so did about 15,000 other artists…Watching Paint Dry in Podunk, Watching Paint Dry In My Dreams, Watching Paint Dry All Over Your Ugly Mug to name a few. The competition is fierce out there.)

Over the last several years, many folks have asked me “What exactly is it, Mary, that you do down there at your studio all day, week after week, year after year?” Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. The only person who has actually ever asked me that particular question is Steve, my husband, who for reasons I have yet to figure out, continues to pay my studio rent, even after it became very apparent early on that revenue from my art sales would never allow him to quit his day job and become a famous rock star as he had once envisioned. Thanks for hanging in there, honey. You’re the best. There’ll be more about Steve in a future blog. He is my favorite musician and songwriter on this planet.

OKAY, LET’S GET STARTED

For those of you who like to put a face to a name, I’ve posted a photo. However, in the interest of protecting my real family’s privacy, the photo is of me (on the right) with my Rent-A-Family ©, taken while we were on vacation last summer in Michigan. Quite a handsome bunch, aren’t they?
In case you didn’t know, Rent-A-Family © is the only way to travel when you’re taking an extended road trip. Rent-A-Family© members never whine, spill Skittles in the crevices of the car seat cushions or hesitate to stop and ask for directions when lost. Mostly they just smile a lot, compliment me often and pay for their own bags of overpriced Cheetos when we stop for gas.

MY STUDIO SPACE

I’ve rented studio space for the last 10 years at the Carter Building in the Glenwood South District of downtown Raleigh, NC. (www.thecarterbuilding.com) There’s a reason why I choose to rent studio space as opposed to work out of my home. Just look at this photo. It was taken

after I had tidied up a bit and before I’d even opened the paints, let alone started slinging them at the canvas. A spare bedroom or the dining room just can’t measure up to the task. The floor alone is one big Jackson Pollock wannabe. If my landlord would let me cut up sections of the floor and frame them, I would - there’s some good stuff there.

But the real reason for wanting a separate studio space, well distanced from my home, is the focus it provides. At home, there’s always another load of dirty laundry to wash, a garden to weed or on those cold rainy days, a cozy chair and a good book calling. It’s very easy to convince yourself, especially if you’re not feeling very inspired, that your time would be much better spent folding underwear or performing a comprehensive comparison study of Tidy Bowl vs. Scrubbing Bubbles in the guest bathroom.

MY MEDIUM

So what exactly is mixed media collage? It can be any mixture or combination of materials, but I work primarily with torn and cut paper (rice and recycled magazines) and paint (watercolor and acrylic) on either canvas or watercolor paper. The additional materials I use are water (for diluting and scrubbing paints), sculpting paste for additional depth and texture, glue for adhesion and either a matte and /or gloss medium to bind all the materials together and provide a protective finish.

Remember the weird kid in kindergarten who despite the teachers best efforts, never learned how to properly use those stupid blunt nose scissors and who ate more paste than she applied to her construction paper Easter Bunny? That was me, and still is, though on the advice of my neurologist, I’ve cut back on my paste consumption. (that might also help explain why I was never very good with the blunt nose scissors)

Rice paper comes in a variety of textures, designs and colors and I use it to add depth and dimension to my work. Light weight rice paper produces a very transparent, soft edged look and feel, as seen in my Wildflowers piece.

Heavily textured, opaque rice paper provides saturated colors and sharply defined edges as seen in this collage from my Cliff Dwellers series.

If I can’t find the color rice paper I want, I paint my own. Adding a layer or two of paint to plain rice paper allows me to create the exact color and texture I want. I can easily modify the look, from transparent to opaque depending upon the type of pigment and application techniques I use. I paint several large sheets of plain rice paper at a time to have on hand for projects like Three Birds.


Magazine paper, preferably glossy, provides an unlimited color pallet and endless design and composition possibilities. For instance, in this first photo, where you see a furniture and drapery ad from a catalog, I see cliffs and waterfalls, similar to those I incorporated into my Cliff Dwellers landscape collage to the right of it.








In the Calvin Kline ad, you see a way under aged, half naked, and from the looks of it clearly constipated, couple doing who knows what to each other (where are their parents, please?), whereas I see potential color and contrast possibilities after a few layers of paints are selectively applied and partially scrubbed off, as in the highlighted section of Proliferation, pictured next to it. Yes, that really is just a piece of painted magazine page, where I’ve scrubbed off some of the paint allowing portions of the original colors, shapes and text to seep through.












And on a more whimsical note, in this third example, you see a pickle ad, I see a great pair of gams to complement the little girl’s cupcake pan liner skirt in my Limbs on the Loose series.














In instances where I need to use actual objects as part of my piece, like the pickles above, I use scissors (I’ve graduated to the kind that can actually cut paper), but in the majority of my work, I use pieces of randomly torn paper that I’ve culled from recycled magazines. I can easily while away a morning, ripping out pages from a variety of magazines that I’ve somehow deemed useful based on their particular color, pattern , texture or composition. These pages eventually get ripped into smaller pieces as they’re incorporated into my collages. Any “scraps” leftover are stored away for later use. It’s not unusual for me to design an entire collage around one piece of scrap paper because I’m taken by its particularly unique shape or pattern.

As for paint, I use watercolor and acrylic because they’re water soluble, dry quickly and are easy to manipulate. My palette is pretty basic, one part Steven Quiller, one part Jeanne Dobie (both of whom are master colorists and if I could have one fraction of the talent and wisdom they possess I would die a happy woman) and one part whatever I can squeeze out of flattened and crusted over 15 year old tubes, labels long since faded.

Sometimes paint is the main component of a piece, sometimes it’s used as an accent, sometimes not at all. In my world, paint and paper have this somewhat unhealthy, often
volatile, co-dependent relationship. No matter how much I try to treat them equally, nurture their self esteem and encourage independence, they’re always trying to outdo the other. If I separate them, that just makes matters worse. Truth be told, when I’m working with these two dysfunctional materials, I never really know where I’m going until I get there. Its best to sit back and let the paper and paint figure it out amongst themselves. Eventually they let me know when they’ve reached a truce and the piece (peace?) is complete.

I think that about does it for the day in the life of me. If you’ve actually made it this far without slipping into a semi-comatose state or jumping off a cliff, I’m very impressed. I welcome your questions, comments and/or feedback if you’re so inclined to share them with me.